Notes related to Latin American Art

The concern about how the surrounding affects not only the individual but also artistic production connects with the principle by which Édgar Calel (San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, 1987) has developed a unique project from scratch at La Oficina gallery. Sueños guardados en granos de maíz brings us to a specific moment of materialization, but it expands toward all the vertices with which the artist works, delving above all into the importance of ancestry, identity, and the spirituality that is related to space.

Mexico has emerged as a significant contemporary art hub on the international stage. Since the inception of Zona Maco, Mexico City has become a key destination for cultural pilgrims, marking the start of the global art fair calendar.

The Museum of Modern Art of Bogota (MAMBO) presents its first exhibition cycle of 2025 with Colombian artist Julieth Morales, Chilean artist Seba Calfuqueo, and Brazilian artist UÝRA. They address, from different perspectives, the relationship between identity, territory and memory, proposing new forms of resistance.

An exhibition that navigates the complex layers of womanhood, resilience, and the inherent solidarity forged through collective survival and the pursuit of safety in community, highlighting the invisible threads that connect women across different cultures.

With strong gallery participation, ARCO is an interesting point to measure how the proposals reach the visitor and the collector. The choices based on aesthetic or commercial criteria create synergies that shape a fluid and sometimes circumstantial representation of each catalog. From Arte al Día, we delve into ten of those catalogs, expanded to variegated universes, monographs and dialogues that show a sample of the approach of Latin American galleries in their presence at the Madrid fair.

The Latin American presence at ARCO is consolidating year after year, establishing itself as a primary guiding thread beyond market trends, becoming a significant part of the identity of the Madrid fair. In this sense, the participating galleries in the various programs showcase well-established names as well as younger or more radical bets, shaping an ecosystem in which various productions can be analyzed.

The organization has entrusted Mexican curator José Esparza Chong Cuy with the development of Perfiles | Arte latinoamericano, a curated journey that highlights, through ten selected figures, the diversity of visual approaches. As the curator himself states, it offers "a broad panorama of how to identify as artists and build community, proposing new ways of making, thinking, and living together."

The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Archives, Library, and Research Collections, announced the launch of Cisneros Research Guide. This bilingual research tool provides public access to over 200 curated digital assets, ensuring the long-term accessibility of key materials related to Latin American and Caribbean art and culture.

Maria Wills (Bogota, Colombia 1979) and Denilson Baniwa (Barcelos, Brazil, 1984) are the responsible for Wametisé: ideas for an amazofuturism, one of the special programs curated for ARCO 2025 and that navigates the Amazon and its growing impact on contemporary art. This proposal proposes a scenario of representation and dialogue through a selection of galleries and guest artists who will raise, through their works and their realities, the different conceptions of the Amazonian world and the possibilities of a collective future.

The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA Miami) presents a retrospective of textile artist Olga de Amaral (Bogotá, 1932), a pioneer in material exploration and the expansion of textile art. The exhibition, in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, will be open from May 1 to October 12, showcasing over 50 works spanning six decades of her career, including pieces never before exhibited outside Colombia.

Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum, in collaboration with the Reina Sofia Museum Foundation, reinforces its growing involvement and strategy for the dissemination and study of Latin American contemporary art with the creation of the Cáder Institute of Central American Art (ICAC), dedicated to the research and dissemination of Central American art.

With an innovative perspective and a personal scenic language, KAY presents a play that reveals how the myths of the Amazon have been distorted to conceal the violence lurking over the women and girls of the region. The performance will serve as the closing event of the tenth edition of the prestigious theater and dance festival Temporada Alta, organized by the Alianza Francesa de Lima.

Marres, House for Contemporary Culture, will present on March 15 the exhibition Vultures & Fireflies by Alejandro Galván; this is a painted chronicle of Mexico from the perspective of one of the largest working-class suburbs.

The Atchugarry Museum of Contemporary Art (MACA) presents the exhibition Carmelo Arden Quin: In the Fabric of Constructive Art, curated by renowned historian and scholar Cristina Rossi.

Madrid's CentroCentro approaches the artistic production related to the Amazon with the exhibition Trópico sin tópico: Amazonas (Tropic without Topic: Amazon), curated by Halim Badawi (Barranquilla, Colombia, 1982), and with which it intends to facilitate new looks beyond the usual ones with which the European imaginary contemplates the indigenous legacy and its relation with the contemporary world.

The American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora presents Antonia Eiriz: In the Eye of the Sibyl, an exhibition showcasing the best of the painter’s work from 1960 to 1990, offering an exceptional insight into the creative journey of one of the most controversial and innovative artists in Cuban art of her time.

Es Baluard organizes Eugenio Dittborn. Pinturas Aeropostales, the first solo show in Spain of Eugenio Dittborn (Santiago, Chile, 1943), one of the key names in the development of Latin American conceptual art in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition focuses on the production of his aeropostal paintings, an artistic instrument that materializes his research and reflection on materials, the physical limits that constrain painting and its distribution and circulation.

The CCCB (Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona) dedicates a wide, meticulous and interesting exhibition that takes us into the natural and cultural heritage of the Amazon, with special emphasis on the art and thought of the cities and indigenous communities of the region. Amazonia. The Ancestral Future brings to the table a detailed vision of artistic practices and Amazonian culture through the work of an extensive list of artists who produce around their thinking and relationship with nature.

CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean – and Pinta, an international platform for promoting Latin American art through fairs and artistic circuits across the region, have formalized a strategic alliance aimed at strengthening and promoting Latin American and Ibero-American art worldwide. This collaboration will culminate in a prominent Art Week to be held in Panama City in May 2025, a new initiative designed to position regional culture on the global stage.

The 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale is coming to an end. Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, offered a reflection through art about migration and borders, recurring themes in today's global discussion. Arte al Día was present to cover the 60th International Exhibition, not only to bring the work of more than 300 artists from almost 100 countries, but also to focus on the contribution of Latin American artists to the global scene, whose presence marked a high point in this edition.

The Appearance: Art of the Asian Diaspora in Latin America & the Caribbean is the first exhibition in New York City at Americas Society to center the artistic production of the Asian diaspora in the region from the 1940s to the present. Focusing on postwar and contemporary art, the exhibition showcases the work of thirty artists from fifteen countries working in a range of artistic mediums including painting, sculpture, performance, photography, and video, to shed light into strategies and themes that resonate across a wide array of Asian diasporic practice throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Spanish-Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra Heshiki represents Spain at the Venice Biennale. It is the first time in 60 editions that an artist not born in Spain does so. Her project Pinacoteca migrante (Migrant gallery), questions colonial narratives and historical modes of representation.

Fifteen artists working across the United States and Puerto Rico have been awarded the 2024 Latinx Artist Fellowships by the U.S. Latinx Forum (USLAF), with $50,0000 in unrestricted funding and a year-long program of professional engagement opportunities.

The Art Basel in Basel fair concluded on June 16th, signaling the near end of the market season before summer. Despite the June London auctions (featuring works from antiquity to contemporary art) this year’s London season is notably diminished.

The exhibition in Jordan Schnitzer Mueum of Art Necroarchivos de las Américas: an unrelenting search for justice, examines artistic responses to violence instigated by state regimes across the Americas to disclose censored narratives, argue for the importance of artmaking as an act of memory and witnessing, advocate research, and seek justice.

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) presents the exhibition Threads to the South, curated by Anna Burckhardt Pérez. The group exhibition features works by over twenty artists from ten countries, including videos, photographs, paintings, works on paper, and textiles developed between 1967 and 2023.

Last week's New York auctions, dubbed "Giga Week," saw art sales soar to an impressive $1.4 billion. This significant figure follows numerous sales at bustling art fairs over the past two weeks. While this amount represents a 22% decrease from the same week in 2023, and 55% less from 2022, auction houses performed admirably given the current challenging economic and political climate.

The NY spring season has concluded with the major auctions of Contemporary and Modern art. While the sales have not been a disaster, most lots have sold either below or close to the low estimate, with some last-minute withdrawals. One year ago, the May sales already marked a clear recalibration of prices. Over the past 12 months, the market has continued its slowdown, and this week's sales have confirmed the trend. It is not a brusque fall or a crash, but a slow-motion downward spiral in prices, with very few but exciting surprises.

The Spanish international art fair ARCOmadrid takes place from March 6 to 10 with a great number of Latin American proposals, curatorial projects, galleries and artists.

The Biennale di Venezia’s 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa.